Cosmopolitanism

It's not about being worldly and sophisticated and it's not about cocktails. Cosmopolitanism is a very old philosophical idea that is coming back into favour. The cosmopolitan believes that each person has a moral responsibility towards each other person, no matter where that person lives or their nationality, religious commitment, ethnic affiliation, socio-economic class, or gender might be. It's a moral virtue for a global age.

Transcript

Coming up this week: cosmopolitanism - it's not about being worldly and sophisticated, and it's not about cocktails (though we really should do something some day on the philosophy of cocktails). Cosmopolitanism is a very old philosophical idea that is coming back into fashion, and we're devoting most of this week's program to a discussion of it.

First though, I've just received a letter from Wendy Morgan of the Queensland University of Technology. 'I listened with great interest to your program of several weeks ago which concerned (among other things) the coherence and correspondence theories of truth', she writes. 'It occurred to me that a poet might have something to add on the subject, not least about the way metaphors and other such imagery in language can suggest a kind of truth, too.' So she wrote a poem, and here it is. So she wrote a poem, and here it is. It's called Driving at the Truth.

The man on the radio says the correspondence theory says truth is what is. If what is is real, then it's true.To say water is fluid is true if water is fluid.

On the passenger seat seven orange carrots lurch as the car's turns make waves in their bubble world.Can this be real if it's not true there are tear-drops in their plastic bag sky?

But (the man says) the coherence theory says if we all believe it and if it fits with other truths we know then it's true for us.People in colder climates may say water's rock-hard in winter but we know water fits itself round rocks as rocks round water.

The bubble now floating in the pond gives away no secrets to the fish who rise from the deep to bump their noses on its smoothness and dismiss the plastic pictures of the orange seven within who flick their tails in the shallows,feel the cool of the depth seep through the wall they can't see.

Loosen the rubber band: the sky collapses,fish pour into the pond where water is what there is now

and all together they know this is so.

Alan Saunders: Thank you very much to Wendy Morgan for the poem, and to Polly Rickard for reading it

Now a brief return to something we talked about on last week's show. It was devoted, you might remember, to the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Now it has sometimes occurred to me that there might be something rather Chinese, specifically Confucian or Taoist, in his thought. So I asked his former student Peter Coleman about it.

Peter Coleman: I think he took oriental thought seriously, and he loved that Indian mythology about how the world is supported by elephants and is tossed around by elephants, and that is the splendour and wonder and horror of the world. But the elephants are supported by an icy-cold, heartless tortoise, and that we should enjoy the wonder and splendour of the elephant and not look too deeply down below to that heartless tortoise. Well that's not just him, he didn't make it up: it's his spin on Indian mythology.

Alan Saunders: Now Oakeshott, as we learned last week, was a great believer in the art of conversation. He thought that we should be spending most of our time in the company of the elephants, so he might have had something to say about the idea of cosmopolitanism, which according to one of its advocates, has a lot to do with conversation.

But what exactly is cosmopolitanism? I asked Stan Van Hooft, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University.

Stan Van Hooft: Well it actually goes back quite a long way. The Stoic philosophers in the Roman Empire spoke about cosmopolitanism; the word comes from 'cosmos', meaning the world, or the whole universe, and 'polis', meaning the political community of which one is a part. And whereas people in those days and up until our own time identify themselves with their own nation or with their own community, the notion of cosmopolitanism suggests that we should identify ourselves with the whole of the world and with everyone in it. And so in more concrete terms, it means that you regard everyone in the world as having the same moral rights and the same entitlements as yourself, and in particular, the same entitlements and rights as your own compatriots or your own identity group, your own ethnicity, your own religion, whatever it might be.

Alan Saunders: Now who exactly is 'everybody' in this contest? Because I wonder whether the Roman Stoics, when they were talking in these terms, really included Barbarians or slaves, and I wonder whether we mean everybody in the sense of every other creature, or do we just mean every other human being?

Stan Van Hooft: Well certainly the Stoics did mean the slaves and the Barbarians as well. That was what was radical about their position. Nowadays the word is used largely in relation to human beings, though I guess there's nothing in principle that prevents it from being extended beyond that, but so far as discussions are taking place using that word at the moment, it is largely human beings. The concept of humanity takes on an especially important role in these discussions, because it is in that people share humanity with us all that they are said to have these same rights and the same moral status as anyone else.

Alan Saunders: Well it's one thing to say that other people all have the same moral status, but the actual fact is that when I'm dealing with people, there are going to be some people with whom I can deal in let's say, a less abstract way than others. People who are like me, people who are local to me and with whom I perhaps share the same loyalties, are in the nature of things probably going to matter more to me, except in a very abstract sense, than people on the other side of the world. So does cosmopolitanism mean that we have to turn our back on those local loyalties?

Stan Van Hooft: Not that we have to turn our back on them, no; but that we should extend them as it were, yes. I guess cosmopolitanism in the way that I think of it, is a kind of virtuous position. My own philosophical interest is in virtue ethics, and what I'm suggesting is that we should make an effort to extend our sympathy and our consideration of rights as far as possible, and ideally to the whole of humanity. There's no denying that people who are close to me in one way or another are going to be, prima facie, of more importance to me: my family obviously, any groups that I identify with - my co-religionists, my co-nationals, members of the same ethnic group, I mean at the moment with the World Cup we're all identifying with our nations to a very high degree. That's perfectly natural, and perfectly legitimate, but it should not prevent us from extending our moral consideration to those people who are not members of those groupings of one kind or another.

In terms of moral thinking, a person who's far away from me culturally and geographically has as much right to my moral consideration as a person close to me.

Alan Saunders: Perhaps we might just detour a bit here, and get you to explain what virtue ethics are.

Stan Van Hooft: It's a way of thinking about ethics that stresses one's personal involvement on the basis of one's character, on the basis of one's developed stances towards others and indeed towards oneself. It's probably easiest to distinguish it from what can be called in contrast, duty ethics; sometimes the word 'morality' is used here. The main characteristics of morality, in this sense, are that one speaks of obligations and duties and that these duties are universal, objective, they are rationally based. When one thinks in moral terms one has to think in relatively abstract terms, in terms of a person's dignity or their rights; one has to obey, that's the sort of psychological structure of it, it's that of obedience; one has to obey the moral demands that are said to exist somehow out there objectively. In the tradition of Western thinking, this way of thinking stemmed from the Ten Commandments, where it was the commands of God, but in the basis of moral obligation whether one sees it in religious terms of, as it was done later, in rational terms, the basis of one's moral obligation is felt to be out there and one is obedient to it.

Virtue ethics in contrast, says that a person who is well brought-up finds within themselves the motivation to do good things for others, and it is their character and their virtue that is the most important thing to understand.

Alan Saunders: Returning then to the question of cosmopolitanism, other people, whether they differ from us in culture, in politics or religion, they're often rather difficult to get along with. Where does the idea of tolerance come into this?

Stan Van Hooft: Well that's a very important virtue to have if you're a cosmopolitan, certainly, because as you say, the things that other people do, especially in regard to their religious lives and the rituals that they follow and so forth, and indeed in their political arrangements very often, other people can be a bit hard to take. So it's important to develop the virtue of tolerance. However, that's rather too easily said, because there are some things which I think it is appropriate for us not to tolerate, and indeed, some of the political practices that one observes around the world, and indeed in one's own country from time to time, are such as we should not tolerate; the way that women are treated in many societies for example; the way that children are exploited in terms of their labour; cultural, religious practices that involve attacks on the integrity of one's body. These may have long histories and there may be from an anthropological point of view, ways in which we can understand them, but from a cosmopolitan's point of view, they perhaps shouldn't always be tolerated, and the criterion there will be whether they violate rights.

Alan Saunders: So rights are universal, they run across cultures, do they?

Stan Van Hooft: That's arguable. I mean these are matters for considerable debate of course. And there are accusations sometimes made that the discourse of rights as it stems, for example, from the United Nations Declarations, is a Western imposition on other cultures. Just as an aside, that's historically wrong; it's historically the case that The Declaration of Human Rights was developed by an intercultural, international committee of thinkers and so it does reflect the attitudes of many of the major world cultures. But that aside, the issue of rights can, I think, be argued to be indeed universal, the existence of rights, because basic human needs are universal. Obviously need for food, shelter and security are universal, because of our biological natures, but as well as that our need for human company, for being able to live in stable family and friendship relationships, the need for participation in decision-making as it affects one, it ultimately works towards a right to democratic participation. These are arguably universal because of the nature of human existence.

It used to be, in the past, that rights were argued for on the basis of complex and sophisticated philosophical theories, some of them with heavy metaphysical commitments, which not everybody could subscribe to. But if you simplify the argument and look just at what human beings need throughout the world, right from the basic level of food and shelter and so forth, to the more sophisticated level of human interactions of various kinds, if you look at that, I think it's not difficult to agree that what people are entitled to throughout the world is pretty much the same throughout the world.

Alan Saunders: Well it's difficult for me to agree, because I am Osama bin Laden, or alternatively I am a Southern Baptist, and I think that the most fundamental human right is a right to seek salvation, and anything that's going to interfere with that, any chasing after other lesser rights, is not to be tolerated.

Stan Van Hooft: Yes, you raise a difficult point there. One of the ways in which cosmopolitans, who by the way are very strongly allied to liberals in terms of classical political theory, one of the ways that liberals and thus cosmopolitans argue that case, is to say that in public discourse metaphysical commitments, which not everyone can understand, should be ruled out, and only considerations which touch on human wellbeing in a way that can be readily understood, and without metaphysical commitments, are admitted. Now of course that would rule out the Southern Baptist, and Osama bin Laden, because the basis of their argument is what an Enlightenment thinker would think was an abstruse metaphysics.

However, that in a sense then becomes a lack of tolerance. In a sense, what you're doing is ruling out of political discourse a kind of consideration which, because you don't hold it yourself, you will not admit as admissible. And so I myself think that that argument isn't as strong as it should be. What I think is the basis, or the possible basis of a refutation of such positions, is once again, a fairly commonsense appeal to human wellbeing, as it is most readily understood from a commonsense point of view. If for example, pursuing one's salvation in accordance with the Bin Laden formula, involves you in suicide bomb episodes, well, that can fairly obviously be shown to be counter to a commonsense conception of human wellbeing, both your own and that of your victims. And so I think that might be the way to argue it. But then it has to be said at the end of the day, if those arguments are not listened to, the scope of argument fails and other measures, be they force of arms or otherwise, would have to be appealed to.

Alan Saunders: Stan, one of the modern theorists of cosmopolitanism is the African-American, by which I mean he was actually born in Africa and now lives in America, the African-American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. He talks a lot about conversation, which is a very appealing notion. Do you think there's a role for conversation here?

Stan Van Hooft: Oh certainly. What he is stressing there is the need for cosmopolitan understanding, the need for cross-cultural understanding. His own background, he was brought up in a town in Ghana called Kumasi, which apparently was extremely multicultural, there were traders from all parts of the globe and various races living there, and various religions in apparent harmony. And he's using that experience as a model for the way the world should live together. It's a kind of global multiculturalism that he's espousing. And I think that's extremely important, because before any true understanding can be established, or perhaps even more to the point, before any political way of living together can be established, some degree of understanding ought to obtain between peoples, and as we were saying earlier, the way in which some people do things seems very strange and peculiar to us, and what Appiah is saying is that we owe it to them to understand as fully as we can, what they are doing. And he has the confidence that when that effort is made, then a much greater level of peace and harmony will ensue.

Alan Saunders: I don't know about the political situation when Appiah was born in Kumasi, but it has often seemed to me that if you want a multicultural society, the best way of achieving it is to have an Empire; that societies where every culture is equally distanced from the source of power, which is to say they haven't got any power, because the source of power is the imposed imperial power, actually get on quite well as multicultural societies. But as soon as you move from the Empire, as it were, to the Republic, and everybody expects to have a role in running things, that's when your multiculturalism gets into trouble.

Stan Van Hooft: Yes I think that's a very interesting observation and certainly recent history bears that out; the former Yugoslavia for example, and of course Iraq as well: if it can be held together by a despotism or by an Empire, then you keep people from each other's throats. I think the situation that obtains in places like that is one of simmering subterranean intercultural rivalry and perhaps even hatred, and as you say, it's the force of arms really from the centre that's keeping it at bay. So in the longer term, what you would hope for is for that simmering resentment and the hatred across cultural boundaries to dissolve away, and that's what Appiah is appealing to by advocating that we should seek to understand each other more. But then again, I guess in the real world, insofar as people draw their identities so strongly from either their religion or their ethnicity, their nation in the non-state sense of the word 'nation', insofar as people draw their identity from that and insofar as identity very often involves constituting the 'other', as indeed other, and as potentially in enemy, it may be that human psychology is not such as Appiah's dream can be realised.

Alan Saunders: To what extent is cosmopolitanism forced on us in the 21st century by globalisation in terms of trade, and also global means of communication; we can know instantly what's happening on the other side of the world.

Stan Van Hooft: I think it's certainly made more possible by that insofar as we trade with other peoples, and in particular for every person, and insofar as we can have through television and radio, a lot of knowledge and visual and oral contact with peoples around the world, cosmopolitanism becomes a much more viable option. I don't think it's the only possible option, however. Nationalism is just as possible; it's just as possible for us to harden our hearts, as it were, when we see others around the globe; it's possible for us to adopt a stance of nationalism, of national pride, of chauvinism even, and xenophobia. So once again it takes an effort of virtue to broaden one's thinking and to be more accepting, and when one knows of other peoples and knows of their practices and indeed of their troubles and their suffering, to be open to that and to be more giving.

Stan Van Hooft: I understand thin obligations to be those that come to us from the context or morality as we described it earlier, that universal system of obligations and duties. In that system, to be a person or to be a human being, is in itself and of itself to have rights and to have, as Kant said, dignity. Now that's a very abstract notion and in that sense, it's thin. You accept that a person has rights, simply because they're a human being.

A thick response, if you will, is based on a much deeper understanding of that person's reality. So for example, when we see suffering children in Africa on television, it's a perfectly appropriate and correct response to say they're a human being, they're suffering, they're entitled to some assistance from us. But if we could also look more closely and see the human reality, the actual suffering, to feel, to be touched by sympathy and empathy, then while our reaction may be much the same, offering some assistance, sending contributions to Oxfam or whatever, nevertheless our motivation is deeper, it comes from within us from our character, from our own humanity and in that sense it becomes a kind of contact across the oceans of human being to human being. That I describe as thick, and that is what I think we are called upon to do, not only because it will sustain us more in our generosity towards others, but because it is in fact the humanity of the other which calls upon us to respond.

Alan Saunders: Well Stan Van Hooft, I and all the rest of us are very thickly obliged to you. Thank you very much indeed for joining us.

Stan Van Hooft: You're welcome, Alan.

Alan Saunders: The program is produced by Polly Rickard with technical production by Janita Palmer. Next week, a film, based on a novel, Tristram Shandy. And what's that got to do with philosophy? Find out next week on The Philosopher's Zone .